


Ornament

by Darkestwolfx



Series: March Prompt a Day 2020 [21]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23429086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkestwolfx/pseuds/Darkestwolfx
Summary: She was no ornament that needed wrapping in layers of bubbles.
Relationships: Penelope Creighton-Ward/Gordon Tracy
Series: March Prompt a Day 2020 [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660813
Kudos: 6





	Ornament

**21: Ornament**

Summary: She was no ornament that needed wrapping in layers of bubbles.

Words: 967

Spoilers: None, but potential references to a canon relationship.

* * *

For someone in her position, so privileged and fortunate, it was indeed very poor of her to say there were things she hated about her life.

She shouldn't hate anything about it.

Her Great Uncle was the fourth richest man in Europe, her Father wasn't bad off himself, she had a perfectly lovely stately home with a mass amount of surrounding grounds, quite the lovely little dog, and the most charming butler – slash – chauffeur ever known to man.

Yes, she was very lucky. Very fortune. With no right to say she hated anything.

But she did.

She didn't verbalise it often, because that did look very unladylike of her, but that didn't stop her from feeling it; feeling it gnaw away at skin like the gnats in the gardens in summer.

She knew – from being told, of course, not from her own assumptions – that she was very beautiful.

Blonde and rich, and well-mannered and kind, and thoughtful and pretty. Yes, everything that made her beautiful in all senses of the word.

Everyone saw that.

The beautiful Lady Penelope.

The lovely Lady Penelope.

The charitable Lady Penelope.

Well two pennies to all that. They could stuff it and have all of those things. She had no plans – not now and not ever – to be anyone's second half. To hang off their arm like a candy cane did the tree at Christmas, and smile and wave with the appropriate charm in all the right places.

No. That wasn't her and it wouldn't ever be. And the day someone tried to make that vision fit her figure she would set Sherbet and Parker on them.

Whilst surviving one of them might be possible… surviving the pair was highly improbable.

She said improbable because it had been done, but that was by someone with far more… stamina than she would expect anyone else to have. It was also someone she didn't really mind surviving.

The reasons she had Parker accompany her everywhere were for more than just the sake of driving. Parker was her distraction, her 'get this man to bugger off, would you?' man, and he did that job with perfect precision.

There was the odd scrap and scratch up, the odd spillage or the once of dumped bowl of punch, but usually Parker was able to complete the task without any issues; allowing her to continue walking around - with poise, of course – as a single entity, not yet a candy cane with clothing and hair.

She loved the Tracy boys with all her heart, that would never change. They were as good as family to her, but that still never stopped her getting annoyed with them.

Scott, John and Virgil had all grown up to be the spit of their Father – well-mannered and official. For years they had met her acquaintance with overly kind manners and accompanied her to events with much care and chivalry. Alan, though he was more humorous in his affairs, was still just as gentlemanly.

Maybe that was why he shone in her eyes, as more than just an ignorant sod looking for a beautiful lady to take to dinner. Okay, sometimes their combined wills put them at loggerheads, but that never stopped her heart beating faster (and not for arguments sake). It never stopped her find annoyance at his offers of help, even if she'd see at the same time that he had no plans to 'rescue' her as such. She could do that for herself, thank you very much.

But still, it remained to be said that the world saw Lady Penelope.

They saw her as an ornament, waiting to be picked up and moved – delicately, mind you – from one place to another. As something that surely couldn't take care of herself and must need someone at her side to enable her safety and security.

They saw her as nothing more than sparking china, moulded and sculpted into exactly what she should be.

Most men who met her were surprised to find – if they managed to last long enough – that she definitely was not china, and that she definitely didn't fit the mold.

She took Parker with her and had him settle any 'candy cane' issues only because she did have an image to hold up, and the time she had tried to settle it herself had led to some explanation for why a Lady would punch anyone… That was swept under the carpet with ease enough, but she wished it was the sort of story she could advertise.

She wasn't a damsel in distress. She was nothing like Rapunzel or Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, waiting for someone to come and save her.

She wasn't a smiling portrait. She was nothing like the Mona Lisa, able to hold a smile for centuries without so much as twitching. She quite liked to imagine that the trapped woman would like to snarl at her admirers.

She wasn't a pretty ornament. She was nothing like the little china figures of women that sat neatly on top of cabinets with their umbrellas and their hats and their long dresses. She quite liked to think about breaking every single one of them and flinging them from existence. They were tacky anyway.

And she was far from that.

She may be a Lady, but this Lady could take care of herself, thank you.

No way was she ever going to content herself with sitting on someone's shelf. If there was something to do, or action to be had, be sure that she was going to be there, in the thick of it. Doing whatever it took.

Because she may be a Lady, but at heart she was no less fierce.

She was no ornament that needed wrapping in layers of bubbles.

She could take care of herself, remember?


End file.
